Monthly Archives: July 2013

The Congress Government at the centre, in the immediate post-independence period used to highlight its democratic functioning and acting as per constitutional provisions. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister. But all this changed once the election in the newly formed Kerala State was formed and the Communist Government under Com. EMS Namboodiripad as Chief Minister took office in 1957. It was a shock to the Congress Party. It could not digest that a state under it is being ruled by the Communist Party.

The anger increased when the Communist Government passed the Land Reforms Bill which benefitted thousands of people who got at least a piece of land. When the Education Bill was passed it benefitted the teachers in private schools, but rattled the private school managements mainly under religious institutions who were exploiting the teachers. All the disgruntled elements started a ‘Vimochan Samaram’ against the elected government with full support of US imperialism who liberally gave financial aid also.
All the democratic cover of the Central Government and the Congress Party was exposed. The Congress government at the centre dismissed the Kerala Government under Article 356 of the Constitution. It was nothing but murder of democracy. It was on 31st July 1959 that this ignominious order was issued and the elected Communist Government dismissed. During the last many decades, despite many attacks from the Congress and the Central Government, CPI(M) has grown as the biggest party in Kerala. The harassment of party comrades and witch-hunt continues, but the Party is fully capable of facing the same.

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The Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Finance Minister on Revival of BSNL/MTNL will meet on 1st August. It was fixed for 30th July, but was postponed to 1st August.
Though the Forum of BSNL Unions/Associations had submitted a detailed memorandum to the committee and requested for a meeting with the GoM, so far no meeting has been fixed. But however, we hope that they may go through the memorandum submitted by Forum representing the 2.5 lakh workers of BSNL.

The National Convention is being organized by the Forum of BSNL Unions / Associations which represents the more than 2 ½ lakh employees of BSNL, including executives. The convention is intended to focus the issues facing BSNL, the telecom PSU, due to the anti-PSU policies of the government as also the non-procurement of essential equipment like mobile lines, cables, Broad-Band Modem etc. and to find out remedies to improve and expand the services.

A detailed Memorandum has been submitted by the Forum to Shri P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister, who is the Chairman of the Group of Ministers appointed to take necessary decisions for Revival of BSNL & MTNL.

BSNL has been posting loss for the last four years mainly because of the company’s revenue has gone down from about Rs.40,000 crore To Rs.27,000 crore. Morethan 1,30,000 employees have retired during the last 10 years causing shortage of staff which is compensated by engaging about 1,00,000 contract workers. It is in this context that BSNL proposes to retrench one lakh workers, which will result in complete dislocation of work.

All these and other issues will be focused in the convention and also suggestions for improvement and expansion for a better service to the people.

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A meeting of the Forum of BSNL Unions / Associations will be held at 1530 hours today, 30th July, to finalise the modalities, arrangements etc. for holding the National convention of BSNL Employees at the Mavlankar Auditorium. Circle secretaries of Delhi are also specially invited.

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A massively participated meeting of BSNLEU as well as BSNLCCWF was organised at Ludhiana on 29th July 2013. Coms.Balbir Singh, Circle Secretary, BSNLEU Punjab, Baljinder Singh, Circle Secretary BSNLCCWU, Balwinder Singh, District Secretary, BSNLEU and other leaders addressed. Com. V.A.N.Namboodiri, All India President, BSNLEU and BSNLCCWF spoke on the issues of strengthening BSNL as also the agitational programmes planned by BSNLEU/United Forum on the major and long pending issues of the workers including the wage revision from 01-01-2012, loss of wage to post-2007 recruitees, stagnation of officials, pension revision of BSNL retirees, both pre and post-2007, issues of casual and contract workers etc.

A separate meeting of the casual and contract workers was held and discussed about the present situation of workers in Punjab. It was decided to meet the GM, Ludhiana and CGM Chandigarh to discuss the issues. The GM was met and demands put forward after the meeting.

Along with Coms. R.L.Moudgil, AGS, Balbir Singh, Circle Secretary, Baljiender Singh, Circle Secretary BSNLCCWU, senior leader H.S.Dhillon and other leading comrades Com. VAN Namboodiri met the CGM Shri Julka and discussed the issues of the contract workers including the non-payment of minimum wage, non-implementation of the EPF, ESI etc. He assured to ensure implementation of the same. Improving the work culture, procurement of equipment and other issues connected with the revival of BSNL was also discussed.

A Press Conference was also held at Ludhiana on the issues of casual and contract workers which was participated my reporters of channels and other media.

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It was the greatest procession and rally that Calcutta has ever seen till that time. It was on 29th July 1946. Thousands and thousands of workers as per the call of the AITUC, the only central trade union at that time, went on strike in support of the P and T employees who were on strike from 11th July 1946 on their demands, which was also part of the independence struggle, and organised the biggest rally Calcutta has ever seen. Com. B.N.Ghosh, founder Secretary General of NFPTE has described the same in his articles, and mentioned about the big support for the strike from the common workers. Com. Jyoti Basu, in this auto biography, has mentioned about the general strike and rally on two occasions.

The 1946 P and T Strike was a great success with the British Government compelled to concede most of the demands of the workers. The strike further resulted in a new thinking that the then existing various unions should come together for settlement of the workers’ demands.

THE 60th anniversary of a heroic action that encouraged the mass struggle that led to the victory of the Cuban Revolution and still remains as a permanent inspiration for the Cuban people in its daily work and bravery is being celebrated this year.

On July 26, 1953, some 150 men and women led by Fidel Castro and Abel Santamaria, launched assaults on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba (the headquarters of Batista´s military dictatorship in the East and the second most important military garrison in the country) and the nearby Bayamo garrison. They were students, workers, young professionals, teachers, artists, clerks. Some were poor, a few were rich, and most of them were sheltered sons and daughters of middle class families. The majority worked in Spartan clandestinity, a few with the knowledge and silent admiration of their trembling parents.

They were led and inspired by an articulate twenty-six year old rookie lawyer, himself the son of a wealthy planter and educated in one of the Havana’s exclusive Roman Catholic schools. His had been the only voice which dared condemn publicly Batista’s military coup d’état of 1952, three months before national elections. In fact, four days after the coup and ten days before the United States officially recognised the dictator, that lone voice went on record at one of Cuba’s highest civil courts, indicting the tyrant and asking for a public trial. His name was Fidel Castro Ruz.

They sold their books and jewelry, they took extra jobs and mortgaged their cars, properties, businesses, until they raised fifteen thousand dollars with which to purchase guns and uniforms. They had no outside help, no offers of support from powerful individuals, organisations, or foreign land. So meager was their arsenal that when time came for the uprising many anxious and well-trained partisans had to be left behind for lack of weapons. (“If only we had had twenty more hand grenades…!”)

The attacks failed and dozens of rebels were murdered after capture and horribly tortured, or were jailed. Fidel escaped to the nearby Sierra Maestra Mountains. He was later captured and put on trial, where he defended himself, delivered his “History will absolve me” speech and convincingly claimed that José Marti, Cuban National Hero, was the mastermind and could not die in the year of his Centenary.

As in every revolution, the price was high. Half of the rebels died, not in combat, but under torture. Their captors were eager to pin the blame for the aborted insurrection on some high official or foreign instigator. The irate tyranny could not conceive that the near-defeat it suffered had been inflicted by a group of ill-equipped youthful civilians with no ties whatsoever to disgruntled politicians, army chiefs, or an exotic ideology. There simply was nothing to confess to, and the truth was too compromising for the government, too indicative of oppression and discontent to be admitted.

After being held incommunicado for 76 days, denied the use of books and legal papers and counsel, aided only by a privileged memory, the novice young leader gave a devastating dissertation in which he reviewed the human and legal rights of men to rebel against tyrannical lords, from the struggles of Oliver Cromwell against Charles I, to the American and the French Revolutions. He quoted from the Rights of Man and the American Declaration of Independence, from the writings of Rousseau, Milton, Balzac, Locke, Saint Thomas Aquinas, José Martí… Turning against his captors he indicted them for abetting the inhumanity and corruption of the dictatorship. He reviewed Cuba’s chronic social injustices and economic ills; 33 percent illiteracy, 30 percent unemployment, the majority of the people living in hovels, sustaining themselves on a diet of roots and rice, unable to give their children shoes, medical care, a hope, a skill, a future.

In the presence of the 100 soldiers guarding him in that courtroom, Fidel Castro accused Batista of a reign of terror and illegality which left the people no other course to liberation than a civilian uprising. And instead of asking for an acquittal, he closed his defense by demanding to be sent to join his brother-rebels already serving jail terms in the Isle of Pines prison, ending with these prophetic words; “Sentence me, it does not matter. History will absolve me.”

They won, on their terms. Shortly after an amnesty achieved under peoples pressure, they went into self-imposed exile in Mexico, there to reorganise and begin training for another try. But the action paved the way for a revolutionary war led by the July 26 Movement, culminating in a popular insurrection that toppled the US-supported Batista dictatorship on January 1, 1959.

Cuban workers and farmers took power out of the hands of the wealthy elite and its US imperialist backers, established a government of their own, and began to transform society for the benefit of the vast majority. For more than five decades, the Cuban people have defended their socialist revolution against the economic and political war and other aggressions by eleven successive US Administrations.

The Barracks are now a school and a Museum of the Revolution.

Join in the celebrations to highlight what the Cuban Revolution means today and why it remains an example for working people – and all oppressed and exploited humanity – around the world, including the United States itself. The most outstanding example is the Cuban Five Heroes who in September 12 will be still languishing in US jails for the only crime to expose terrorism in defense not only of Cuba, Latin America but the American people too.

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The government is being compelled to modify the poverty line guide lines due to the strong protest from political parties and eminent personalities. Below is a report from Delhi:

NEW DELHI: The government will soon revise the contentious poverty line upward from Rs 27.20 in rural areas and Rs 33.40 in urban areas after it receives the report of the Rangarajan committee that is examining the validity of the current yardstick.

Minister of state for planning Rajeev Shukla told TOI the government was in the process of re-evaluating the poverty line in a bid to make it as comprehensive a measure of social and economic backwardness as possible.

After both Congress and opposition leaders debunked expenditure of Rs 27 and Rs 33 per person per day as a benchmark for defining poverty, the government said the line had not been cast in stone.

“The poverty line is being reassessed. The Rangarajan committee is doing just that. In any case, the poverty line is not linked to pro-poor programmes like rural job guarantee or food security,” Shukla said. (courtesy: TOI)

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Even while the ruling combine at the Centre claims of economic growth after persuing neo-liberal policies since 1991, the result is that the disparity between the rich and poor widened many-fold.

According to the data collected by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO),the average spend of the richest group in urban areas was 12 times that of the poorest group in 2000; In 2012, it has increased to 15 fold. In rural areas, the disparity increased from 7 to 10 times in these 12 years.

The new economic policy has resulted in the GDP Growth for most of this period; but has not tickled down to the neediest. Rather is benefiting the already affluent sector more. The Reliances, Tatas and other richest have flourished and the poor perished or cornered

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The casual and contract workers of Hazaribag, numbering about 300 are on strike for the last one week demanding payment of wages for the last five months since March 2013.Despite several discussions, the BSNL management has not implemented the payment of minimum wage, social security measures like ESI, EPF etc.
BSNL management should become sensitive to the condition of the poor workers and settle the issues urgently. It is a shame that a PSU like BSNL is exploiting the toiling workers.
We demand the BSNL Corporate Office as also the Circle administration to immediately intervene and ensure that the workers are paid the arrears of wages and all other claims are settled with out further delay.